Our thoughts, rants and inside knowlege of web design & development!
Chris
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Homepage: http://www.areatrade.co.uk
Posts by Chris
LinkedIn Share Button
Dec 1st
Business oriented social network giant LinkedIn has recently launched a share button which gives users a way to spread thier content throughout their professional network.
There are 3 options of the share button available which can be easily added to your website or blog – as follows:
1. vertical:
2. horizontal with counter:
3. horizontal without counter.
LinkedIns latest updates combined with the additional sharing options released back in April, link attaching, status updates, ability to re-share links as well as edit and delete posts brings it inline with social media giant Facebook.
The share button competition is strong with Facebook, Digg, Twitter, StumbleUpon and countless others, do you think LinkedIn has a place in this market and which is your preference?
Flock – The Social Web Browser
Dec 1st
Flock was first released in 2005 and is known for its social networking elements, for years the browser was based on the GECKO rendering engine, same as Firefox. In June it has swopped over to use Googles Chromium Engine in an attempt re-invent itself.
With the financial backing of Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape they have created the future of browsing and have been quick to react to the launch of RockMelt a start up looking for a piece of the social browsing market. Albiet a little cumbersome and not nearly as polished as Flock, it has ruffled a few feathers, competition is good.
See the into for Flock – better still download it – its free and take it for a spin.
Let us know what you think.
Google Earth – Here’s What’s New
Dec 1st
The search engine giant Google has recently released the latest version of Google Earth. Here are a quick run down of the new features.
Integrated Street View Street view is now fully integrated into this version update, it means you can go from orbiting the Earth to standing in your road.
3D Trees Google Earth has had 3D buildings for some time they have now introduced 3D to give the background a little more content.
Better Historical Data You can now go back into time, the oldest time available will show in the status bar at the bottom, this wil let you see places before Earthquakes and in some cases historical events such as London in 1945.
Watch the video – its all getting pretty amazing.
Creative Print Studio Website Design Launch
Nov 30th
We are pround to launch this website design for a creative print and design studio in Cuffley. The website design brief was very specific and required something a little different. The developed a bespoke platform and integrated some really nice JQuery elements to provide the slide effects. Simple yet effective. See it here.
If you need any help with your ecommerce web design or website design set up and online promotion please contact us today.
Twitter Analytics
Nov 24th
Twitter is set to launch an analytic tool to help users to track the popularity of their Tweets, number of retweets and the number of replies each post recieved. This tool is a fantastic tool which will make marketers jump for joy especially when reports say it will be FREE?
Surely Twitter could have cashed in on this one?
Let us know if you would have paid for this kind of service?
2011 Small Business Marketing Budgets
Nov 24th
Small businesses are expected to continue to invest larger shares of their advertising budgets in the favour of websites over other forms of advertising according to a recent survey undertaken by Zoomerang and Growbiz Media. This shows that smal businesses will continue to push their websites aswell as direct mail, e-mail marketing, social media and print advertising.
Website Design and Ecommerce Web Design have contributed to the rise above all other advertising forms as more companies understand that the future of their business is linked to the quality of their website. It is estimated that 39% of all small businesses with fewer than 1000 staff are spending around 20% of their budgets in favour of their website and 17% of all small business plan to increase their web spenditure throughout 2011. In comparison 15% reported they will increase their email marketing budgets and 13% their social media investment.
Amazingly only 54% said they had a website design and only 13% had a website blog. Looking into the website features the majority (80%) of websites contained general business information, 45% customer service, 35% lead generration and 30% had an Ecommerce Web Design element.
This shows there is huge room for improvement amongst small business owners to More >
Google responds to Bekko threat
Nov 5th
As we reported previously, Bekko the new alternative search engine platform that uses slashtags assigned to websites to removes spam websites when searched has as we predicted forced Google to respond.
In an update to the Google blog this morning Google is prompting it’s users to report spam websites. They have recently released a Chrome plug-in which makes reporting spam websites much easier.
Spam websites will always be a frustration when your searching online, seems Bekko idea is a good one but will all websites adopt the slash tag method or will Google just increase their spam algorithms?
Either way it is good news for the end user.
Let us know what you think?
Partial Flash Support now available on iPhone via Skyfire Mobile Browser
Nov 3rd
The new mobile browser SkyFire has been approved by Apple and is due to be released tomorrow in the App Store priced at $2.99.
SkyFire converts Flash videos into HTML5 on SkyFire’s servers making it possible to view flash movies not previously supported on iPhone. Due to the conversion there will be a slight delay while it is processed.
Skyfore itself has been around for a few years in test mode and had been released for Windows Mobile, Symbian Devices and Android. However it does not support Flash games.
Foursquare Introduces Super Duper Swarm and Epic Swarm Badges
Oct 30th
Social Media Location Service FourSquare have rolled out ‘Super Duper Swarm’ and ‘Epic Swarm’ badges for people who convene in the same location in massive quantities.
Previously the biggest quantity badge was ‘Super Swarm’ for groups of 250 in the same place. In major cities like London this has occurred many times prompting the new and improved milestones.
“When we made the original Swarm badge we thought, ‘What are the odds of ever getting 50 Foursquare users together?’ And then we did the same with Super Swarm for SXSW. ‘Will anyone ever even unlock these?’” explains Foursquare co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley. “And now they are unlocked on a regular basis — baseball games, concerts etc. So we needed bigger.”
When asked Swarm badge would exceed the 1000 mark, Foursquare had no answer…
“In our internal badge meetings, we’re thinking, ‘What’s after this?’ We have no idea,” says Crowley.
Although these badges are pure fun it does go to show the growth of the FourSquare buzz and the use of smartphones to interact with others via social media channels.
Do you use FourSquare and what name would you call the next milestone?
Firefox 4 Delayed Until Early 2011
Oct 29th
The next major launch of the search engine browser FIREFOX, due to be released at the end of 2010 has been delayed to early 2011.
The change was announced by director Mike Beltzner “Completing this work (on Firefox 4) is taking longer than initial estimates indicated as we track down regressions and sources of instability. As part of our commitment to beta users, we will not ship software before it is ready,”. The software firm added that the new version will only be released when it is ready.
Are you a Firefox user, let us know?